Last week was a big preview time for the Brooklyn Nets and their part-owner and, for now, their prime attraction, Jay-Z. Why not? The Nets referred to Jay-Z as a “cultural icon.” Any relation to Carl Ichan?

Jay-Z is so powerful he’s the only NBA team owner who can regularly, publicly and profitably call black men “n****rs.”

“Commissioner Stern, one of your team owners openly refers to black men as n****rs. You down wid dat, Dee-Stern?” He must be.

What a shame. The most detestable of American words was trending dead.

In my household the word was at least deep into its third generation of banishment. Even if it was spoken in historical or socially relevant context, it had to be simultaneously whispered and mumbled. My parents wouldn’t allow it, not even from a neighbor. And for a few years we weren’t even sure if my kids knew the word.

But by the time they hit their late teens, it was back, here, there and everywhere. Street-cred seekers spoke it with ease, as if ordering a slice of pizza. And it was indulged by pandering politicians, selectively indignant black social activists and a cowardly news and sports media.

It was in large part restored to the mainstream by rappers such as Jay-Z, who today stands among the most celebrated and enriched purveyors of the sustained self-enslavement of black America and its perverse predilection toward drugs, guns, 4 a.m. shootouts, hideously warped material values, prison-culture, murder, functional illiteracy, boasts of obligatory sexual mistreatment of young women known as “bitches” and “hoes,” and the insidious, forever-price-to-pay of surrendering parenthood and motherhood, now represented by insignificant others called “baby mamas.”

For crying out loud — and likely for the better, and despite all the mainstreaming — I’m still not allowed to spell out the n-word out in print.

Jay-Z, NBA team owner, is among the most successful at exploiting and growing a racial culture that logically should have been long gone. He’s among those at the forefront of the Ten Million Man March, Backwards.

I know, he’s just keepin’ it real.

Besides, celebrity has its advantages. Also last week — and speaking of gang cultural icons — John Travolta checked in with the Gotti Family to get its blessing to portray John Gotti. Why not instead seek the approval of the families of Gotti-ordered murder victims?

I’m left to find some comfort in the fact that Travolta didn’t plan to portray Heinrich Himmler. He might’ve sought the approval of the American Nazi Party. Just keepin’ it real.

Baseball season finales make for riveting TV

WEDNESDAY’S was perhaps the most astonishing last regular season night of concurrent baseball games in history. And three of the coverage networks seen here did a great job keeping track. YES and SNY stayed on top of the four games that counted (the kind that soon won’t mean as much with added wild-card teams). MLB Network was fantastic, providing live and seconds-old video. Just a riveting TV night.

Predictably, the night’s only failure was ESPN, which figured that Red Sox-Orioles — another mind-blower — was the perfect time to shove its virtual strike zone gizmo endlessly over live pitches and down America’s better baseball senses.

But that’s ESPN — the telecast can never be about the game; it always has to be about something else, something foolish, something distracting, something excessive and exploitive, something designed to serve those least likely to be watching, something that reeks of ESPN.

* Redskins-Cowboys, Monday night, was another systemic

ESPN train wreck, another words, graphics and other junk excess jamboree — unless you tuned in to watch Jerry Jones and Dallas assistant Rob Ryan. A total of 28 — 28! — cut-away shots appeared of the two.

* Michael Kay remains so eager to attach his exclamatory signature and verbal excesses to every dramatic moment that not even the self-evidence of TV can save him. Tuesday, more self-infliction. In his third call of the play, Kay couldn’t help but shout that Russell Martin hit into “an inning-ending triple play!”

* Mike Francesa’s Know-It-All Tout of the Week: Only possible shot the Giants have to beat the Eagles is to beat them, and badly, in time of possession. Final score: Giants 29, Eagles 16. Time of possession: Eagles 37 minutes, Giants 23.

Jose, 2nd better than your 1st

NON-lookalikes: Reader Mike Holland submits Jose Reyes and Ted Williams. Speaking of Reyes, let’s stop the thin rationalizations. He would’ve been more admired — and nobly recalled — had he finished in second place while playing than finishing first while sitting.

* The Raiders went 0-for-8 on third down last week? The Jets must’ve smashed them, 42-0. The Raiders won, 34-24? Impossible. But if you watch games instead of stat sheets you know that the vast majority of highlighted stats have no applicable relevancy to right-now game and next-play circumstances. But nothing’s going to change, is it?

* Now WCBS radio is replaying John Sterling’s “strike three!” call of Mariano Rivera’s 602nd save. Was it strike three swinging or looking? Hey, if it didn’t matter to Sterling, why should it matter to baseball fans?

* Tuesday in Trenton, David Findel was sentenced to five years and three months in prison for bank and wire fraud. He presumably will get more time next month when he’s due to be sentenced for bankruptcy fraud.

Findel was the inside job operator the Jets allowed to be their multimedia poster boy for PSL sales, “winning” an online auction to buy two front-row seats for the highly suspect price of $414,000.

That a) the Jets were previously familiar with Findel as a team mortgage broker, glad-hander and hanger-on, b) Findel was in huge debt, and that, c) he told a creditor that this was just “a publicity stunt” — a sales fraud — didn’t matter to the Woody Johnson Jets.

And it still doesn’t matter to the NFL and Commissioner Roger “PSLs Are Good Investments” Goodell.

But the financial misconduct of its teams never seems to bother the NFL. Thousands of tickets sent to the Packers for face-value sale to its loyal patrons for the 1997 Super Bowl, instead arrived in Green Bay and were then delivered to a travel agency in Texas. The NFL didn’t much care about that inside ticket scam, either.